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Iders: Start by asking different questions

Recently, National Review‘s John Derbyshire took on George Gilder’s case against Darwinism and for ID.

To Gilder’s “Darwinian Theory has Become an All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific Advance” (his subtitle, actually), Derbyshire ripostes against ID,

After being around for many years, it has not produced any science. George’s own Discovery Institute was established in 1990; the offshoot Center for Science and Culture (at first called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) in 1992. That is an aggregate 30 years. Where is the science?

(Now, combining the figures in this way to get “thirty” is a bit dodgy.

I mean, in the same way, you could combine my age with my two daughters’ ages, and come up with a single human who is nearly 120 years old, but …)

It seems to me that ID is so different from Darwinism that if IDers want to make their case, they should probably not focus primarily on trying to get papers published in a hostile atmosphere, useful as that may be, but rather by asking different questions of nature.

As we journalists know well, people who ask different questions often discover different things.

Here’s one question that intrigues me: Why do some life forms not evolve, or so little that it hardly matters? The coelacanth and the cockroach come to mind, but there are others, including common ferns and cycads. Surely these life forms experience genetic mutations and changes in their environment.

If some life forms are especially well adapted over long periods of time, can general principles that are not mere tautologies (= they survived because they were fit and we know they were fit because they survived) be derived? If not, why not?

It strikes me that if IDers can make useful contributions by thinking about a problem differently from Darwinists, it is irrelevant whether a Darwinist allegedly “could have” made the same finding.

In the context, “could have” is a grammatical tense parallel to real time, not intersecting with it.

35 Responses to Iders: Start by asking different questions

The question of evolutionary stasis is an interesting one (though I think evolutionists would say the cockroches have continued to ‘evolve’).

The question I have wondered about recently has to do with the biological ‘explosions’ we see in the fossil record, like the Cambrian explosion. If indeed the 30+ phyla that appeared in the Cambrian were the product of mutation and NS acting on the simpler life forms that preceded them, and mutation and NS has continued to act on those same simple life forms for the last 500 million years, why has no such explosion occurred again? After all, if that is how evolution acted on those life forms, and those life forms continued to exist, why would they do so without producing another explosion of new phyla, body plans, and tissues?

“HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s one question that intrigues me: Why do some life forms not evolve, or so little that it hardly matters? The coelacanth and the cockroach come to mind, but there are others, including common ferns and cycads. Surely these life forms experience genetic mutations and changes in their environment.”

Come to think of it: What is ID’s explanation for this apparent lack of evolutionary change?

Come to think of it: What is IDÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s explanation for this apparent lack of evolutionary change?

One of the main contentions of ID was that there was no ‘evolutionary change’ in the larger sense because the organisms that exist are the product of intentional design; as such, the theory itself is the explanation.

“Come to think of it: What is IDÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s explanation for this apparent lack of evolutionary change?”

ID’s explanation for the apparent lack of evolutionary change is the same as Einstein’s explanation for the apparent lack of ether. It’s apparently missing because it actually IS missing, like the apparent lack of unicorns. The only sort of change we have evidence for is minor changes within kind, like finch beaks getting larger or smaller.

That is also a fair question, but it is irrelevant to the question of the existence of design. That would be the “bad design means no design” fallacy. It is also a question that moves beyond ID as a scientific enterprise and into the realm of philosophy. No problem with going there, as long as we recognize the question is no longer one of ID but of philosophy.

Answer: Redesign (technological evolution) itself requires design, and lots of things are designed so well in the first place that they donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t need to be redesigned.

How is this any less tautological than “they survived because they were fit and we know they were fit because they survived”? Can ID quantify the “wellness” of design and state objectively why things are well-designed? Or do we know they are well-designed by the fact that they have never been redesigned?

That is also a fair question, but it is irrelevant to the question of the existence of design. That would be the Ã¢â‚¬Å“bad design means no designÃ¢â‚¬Â fallacy. It is also a question that moves beyond ID as a scientific enterprise and into the realm of philosophy. No problem with going there, as long as we recognize the question is no longer one of ID but of philosophy.,

Do you think the alternate question of why nature ‘redesigns’ organisms is philosophical as well? I ask because I have never heard it answered why nature, having produced the most successful organisms of all time from a reproduction standpoint virtually ‘right out of the gate’ (bacteria), went on to produce organisms that are decidely less successful.

That is also a fair question, but it is irrelevant to the question of the existence of design. That would be the Ã¢â‚¬Å“bad design means no designÃ¢â‚¬Â fallacy.

Ofro did not say bad design means no design. You might have encountered that argument before, but Ofro didn’t make it. And if you take a look, Mr. Dembski said that “Redesign (technological evolution) itself requires design, and lots of things are designed so well in the first place that they donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t need to be redesigned.” was ID’s explanation, he did not say it was an explanation beyond ID.

“No problem with going there, as long as we recognize the question is no longer one of ID but of philosophy.”

Then permit me a related question: The fossil record tells us that there are a lot of species/designs that disappeared after a certain period. Is an explanation for this disappearance also restricted to the realm of philosophy, or can ID account for that?

Ofro’s question is why something was not well-designed in the first place. It is not a question of redesign, but initial design. At least that is what I think he meant by “in the first place.” And Dembski’s comment makes no assertions one way or the other about the reasons for an initial design’s perfection or lack of it.

I stand by my point. Speculation into why an initial design was done one way rather than another is not part of ID proper as a science. That would require, at least, knowledge of the designer and his/her/its purposes, which ID explicitly does not require. ID, at least for now, is about detecting design, not ferreting out the reasons for design.

Then permit me a related question: The fossil record tells us that there are a lot of species/designs that disappeared after a certain period. Is an explanation for this disappearance also restricted to the realm of philosophy, or can ID account for that?

I would think that it goes to the limits of design in a particular environment, particularly when that design is based on a known information system like the genome. A wholly static design would only work in a wholly static environment; that is an environment that was in effect ‘frozen’.

But I think on the larger picture the idea of a fine-tuned universe helps us here; if indeed it was intentional the universe culminate with intelligent life like man, then the designs of other organisms could be seen as an integrated system which allows intelligent life to exist; and the appearance and disappearance of various forms of life would lend themselves to the ultimate benefit of intelligent life. Of course, humankind, being an intelligent agent itself, exhibits choice, and those choices in turn effect the systems in which those other designs reside.

Natural selection as a *destructive* force is well-established empirically. We observe it happening all the time. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that species in the past went out of existence for the same reasons they do now: They can no longer survive in their environment. On this, ID and Darwinism agrees.

Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why do some life forms not evolve, or so little that it hardly matters? The coelacanth and the cockroach come to mind, but there are others, including common ferns and cycads. Surely these life forms experience genetic mutations and changes in their environment.Ã¢â‚¬Â

Sometimes, what appears to be primitive and unchanged is not that way at all. Consider the Platypus for example. It has many reptilian features, including a cloaca (a single exit for anus, urethra and reproductive tract), it lays eggs, and it does not have nipples (although it does produce milk). In these respects and others it is a very primitive mammal that might not seemed to have changed very much over the past 200 million years. On the other hand it has that magnificent duck-bill which is a very sophisticated piece of navigation-equipment, that functions in a manner that is analogous to our detection of vision, a dogÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s detection of smell, or a batÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s detection of sound. In the case of the platypus bill it is used to provide tactile (touch) sensory information…and it is very sophisticated indeed. So parts of its body have continued to serve itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s needs very well, primitive as they may seem, other parts have continued to change to allow it to capitalize maximally within a particular ecological niche.

Other organisms, have changed relatively little in all aspects of their bodyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s anatomy and physiologyÃ¢â‚¬Â¦as you indicate. This is no surprise at all to biologists. The sparseness of anatomical and physiological change relates to the stability of the particular ecological niche to which they are adapted. Not all niches changeÃ¢â‚¬Â¦if the organism continues to be well-adapted to its environment it can be in stasis and can exist that way as long as the niche for which it is adapted doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t change.

I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t see that there is any tautology involved in this. We can point to examples in our own society in which certain aspects about our environment have changed dramatically over the years whereas others have stayed the same. A pastor for example is still a pastorÃ¢â‚¬Â¦that niche of being a leader of a church still exists and has for a long time. On the other hand, a computer programmer is a new niche that never existed when I was growing up. It is not surprising that the same sort of thing is true of ecological niches in nature.

If ID can, as Dembski says, make statements about how good a design is, why can’t it hypothesize about the designer’s capabilities and motives, Taciturnus? Why are the putative space aliens off-limits to the kind of inferences we generate about human designers?

I have to admit that I thought taciturnus’ first “edited” comment was a clever way by him to underscore the point he wanted to make about the degradation of information. Doing the same to my comments is no longer funny.

From moderator Denyse: Some posters insist that the vowels were not deleted at their end. That sounds remarkable to me, given that only some of the comments have the vowels removed. Not likely happening at this end. But I will make an enquiry. Meanwhile, it is not worth the readers’ time to decipher the comments, so I have removed all, and will continue to do so until the problem is resolved.

Denyse,
It’s OK if you remove the disemvoweled messages because they are a pain to decipher. But I hope they have been saved in their original, submitted form so that you can repost them. And please find this apparently unauthorized editor. Thanks,

In case you have not noticed, in the Ã¢â‚¬Å“pagesÃ¢â‚¬Â section there is a Ã¢â‚¬Å“comment policyÃ¢â‚¬Â document posted by ex-moderator DaveScot on February 2, 2006 where he had this to say about disemvoweling:

Ã¢â‚¬Å“Disemvoweler – Ocassionally a troll will annoy me enough to disemvowel his comment then publish it. You can thank the wonderful folks at the PandaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Thumb for that precious little trick. PZ Meyers I believe was the first to use it on my comments there. Imagine my delight when I found a plugin for WordPress that strips all the vowels out of a comment. What goes around comes around. I modified it so it strips out your URL but leaves your name intact so everyone knows who the troll is but canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t see the web address he wants to advertiseÃ¢â‚¬Â.

Intent and purpose- as in what are they- are exclusive questions to ID. IOW if we do have a purpose and there was/ is an intent there isn’t any way we could figure it out under the current dogma.

Page 270 of Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Privileged PlanetÃ¢â‚¬Â

Ã¢â‚¬Å“In fact, no amount of evidence for apparent design could ever count as evidence of actual design. But if science is a search for the best explanation, based on the actual evidence from the physical world, rather than merely a search for the best materialistic or impersonal explanations of the physical world, how responsible is it to adopt a principle that makes one incapable of seeing an entire class of evidence?Ã¢â‚¬Â

What makes an organism what it is? Is also an interesting question and one evolutionists do not appear to be interested in. That also happens to be one question, that when answered, will knock down their house-of-cards. (Where’s My Cousin Vinnie when you needf him?”

darrel falk @19: “Other organisms, have changed relatively little in all aspects of their bodyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s anatomy and physiologyÃ¢â‚¬Â¦as you indicate. This is no surprise at all to biologists. The sparseness of anatomical and physiological change relates to the stability of the particular ecological niche to which they are adapted. Not all niches changeÃ¢â‚¬Â¦if the organism continues to be well-adapted to its environment it can be in stasis and can exist that way as long as the niche for which it is adapted doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t change.”

[Living fossils] are species of animals and plants that have not visibly changed in more than 100 million years. This includes the horseshoe crab (Limulus; Triassic), the fairy shrimp (Triops), and the lampshell (Lingula; Silurian). Equally long-lived have been found among the plants: Gingko (dating to the Jurassic), [etc.] … The complete standstill or stasis of an evolutionary lineage for scores, if not hundreds, of millions of years is very puzzling. How can it be explained? In the case of living fossils, all the species with which it had been associated 100 or 200 million years ago had either changed drastically since that time or had become extinct… To explain why the underlying basic genotype was so successful in living fossils and other slowly evolving lineages requires a better understanding of development than is so far available.

Ã¢â‚¬â€Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is: Yes, That’s Right, I Get to Define It (2001), pp. 195.

[Boldface added.]

Sorry, I have to go with Mayr over Falk…
Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€
A remarkable, related piece of information (p. 186):

There are a number of species of plants in eastern North America (including skunk cabbage) of which populations are also found in a certain area in eastern Asia. These widely separated populations on two different continents are not only morphologically indistinguishable, but apparently also fully fertile with each other, even though they must have been isolated from each other for 6 – 8 million years. The American botanist Asa Gray called this fact to Darwin’s attention [Gray, Darwiniana (1876), pp. 181-186.]

Hello, Denyse! I am just speculating here: but defacing the content of posts and printing the submissions anyways may have been DaveScot’s way of spiting the trolls. Having observed Dave here for a while, he always seemed to enjoy jousting with his “loyal opposition”.

Hello Denyse (and all who are listening in), I am encouraged by this post on Uncommon Descent. Maybe even more so in the honesty in dealing with the “Disemvoweler”.

To the question at hand, “Why do some life forms not evolve, or so little that it hardly matters?” First of all, I believe all scientists should be atheists when making positive, scientific arguments. While I have no doubt this won’t be popular here, even William Dembski makes room for me in the big tent by admitting that “telic organizing principles in nature are ID alternatives that donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t require God; but these are way down the totem pole for most people”.http://www.uncommondescent.com.....hives/1229

So with that tentative invite, I present some thoughts to your question using an ID alternative basis…

We live in a universe where we generally perceive things as cause and effect, first the cause and then effect. This simple concept can be questioned when you consider time as just another dimension and conceptualize things from outside that frame of reference. Does the cause push the effect, or does the effect pull the cause? From an external viewer, the answer could be “both”. A very loose analogy would be a drinking straw.

This push/pull kind of distinction is very difficult to perceive at the microscopic level. Individual water molecules move quite randomly when going through a straw. It is difficult enough to perceive their combined motion much less determining whether they are being pushed or pulled.

Just about everyone agrees microevolution exists. Plenty of IDers even agree with macroevolution, albeit as a designed process. I am suggesting macroevolution that is both pushed by the past and pulled by the future. If true, this hypothesis would predict a higher than expected number of non-evolved life forms. This would be due to their continued existence being pulled by their fitness to a future environment. The trick, of course, would be to detect a bias within equally fit life forms to thosed based on fitness for an unpredicted future.

By the way, this isnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t an original idea. There are a lot of principles in common with Anthropic principles. GilDodgen touched on it with his post titledÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ The Universe is Rigged Ã¢â‚¬â€ From Top to Bottomhttp://www.uncommondescent.com.....hives/1293

My questionsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦

Does this fall under the “telic organizing principles in nature” ID alternative?

If not, what kind of hypothesis would qualify?

If so, does it matter that this hypotheses does not require an intelligence?